RaveOrionLike the brilliant George Saunders, Russell uses non-realist situations to pursue a realist goal: illumining the human heart ... To be a child, these stories imply, is to be freer of the restraints of human culture, more in touch with the nonhuman world ... Like the underwater worlds that haunt her pages, Russell’s stories fascinate us with a strangeness that feels more familiar with every moment we spend submerged, until we swim in it as readily as we walk on land.
